A system comprising a digital copier and a host computer provided with functions that the digital copier does not have and connected to the digital copier via a network has been proposed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. HEI09-238215.
In the system of the patent document, the digital copier transmits bit data (including command codes for control, image data (density data), etc.) to the host computer. The host computer receiving the bit data analyzes the received command codes and executes image processing to the image data according to image editing functions that have been specified for the image data. The image data processed by the host computer as above is returned to the digital copier and printed by the digital copier.
In the system, when one or more new functions are added to the host computer, information on the new functions is sent from the host computer to the digital copier. The digital copier receiving the information allows the user to select some of the new functions that should be registered in the digital copier, that is, some of the new functions that the user hopes to use. In short, the user of the system is allowed to use some of the new functions of the host computer by registering the desired functions in the digital copier.
However, the above system is unsuitable for environments in which the number of services randomly increases and decreases from day to day (like general servers on the Internet).
Specifically, since each function added to the host computer becomes available to the user when the user registers the function in the digital copier in the system explained above in environments (like general servers on the Internet) in which various types of services are added and removed frequently, the user has to carry out the registration of functions in the digital copier very often with an increasing amount of information to be registered.
Especially when there are a great variety of services, the task of selecting a necessary service from all the services becomes more and more troublesome to the user as the number or variety of services increases. Further, the task of inputting various parameters necessary for receiving the selected service also becomes more and more tiresome to the user as the number or variety of parameters increases. The user having to carry out the troublesome task of selecting a service from a variety of services and the setting of necessary parameters upon each execution of a frequently-used service is extremely inefficient.